The seamy underside of suburbia gets exposed, again, in The Black Circle Boys, a direct-to-video drama inspired by a true story. After watching his best friend die, champion swimmer turned speed-metal enthusiast Scott Bairstow (Party Of Five) moves with his family to another town and falls in with a gang of nogoodnik aspiring musicians with Satanic pretensions. Led by Eric Mabius (Welcome To The Dollhouse), the gang draws Bairstow deeper and deeper into its dark world of chemical abuse, mysterious rites, and drug-dealing New Kids gone bad (yes, that's Donnie Wahlberg dressed like Depeche Mode's David Gahan in a couple of scenes). To his credit, first-time director Matthew Carnahan makes his film seem a good deal more interesting than it really ought to be. He has a stylish touch that makes Mabius' bargain-basement occultism fairly menacing, while Mabius and Bairstow both give intriguing, if twitchy and never quite convincing, performances. But The Black Circle Boys itself can never quite get past its relentlessly slow pace and lurid-but-flat tabloid origins, making it a video-premiere companion piece to the similarly flawed American History X, with half-assed Satanism taking the place of neo-Nazism. Bespectacled alterna-cheesecake Lisa Loeb makes an appearance, but if you're looking for her, try not to blink.